Important Words From Surprising Sources
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6i9VPrj170
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny3rOK-MZuA
It is a confusing time, but many people are out there trying to confuse you on purpose. However, there are some who speak with clarity.
The Israel-Hamas War that began with the slaughter of innocent Jews on October 7 by Hamas invaders from Gaza into southern Israel is being made to be an issue with two sides. It is also seeming to force everyone to choose a side. This is ridiculous for a number of reasons and the attached presentations by Bari Weiss, a Jewish journalist, and Eric Adams, the Black mayor of New York, make this abundantly clear. Obviously, the Hamas invasion had only one purpose. Kill Jews. That is what Hamas stands for and it is the people of Gaza who elected Hamas to lead. Israel was foolish in thinking it could deal with a group whose sole purpose was the killing of Jews and the eradication of Israel. This does not mean that the killing of many civilians in Gaza is excusable. It is, like the killing of civilian Germans in Dresden, explainable. It is also horrible.
In essence it really comes down to this.
After October 7, the state of Israel was forced to respond to the killing of its citizens and the kidnapping of over 200 others. That the Hamas invasion was brutal and genocidal is not the point. The point is that Gaza had elected Hamas to run itself and that entity, Hamas, had committed a heinous crime that the Israeli government thought could not go unanswered any more than the United States could do nothing about 9/11. This is not to say that what the U.S. elected to do in the years after 9/11 was a wise series of choices. It wasn’t.
One can argue as to what that answer might be for Israel after 10/7 and a good case could be made that the carpet bombing of Gaza in an attempt to root out Hamas and get the hostages back was a less than a stellar choice. Ask an Israeli, not an American. No one asked the French what the United States ought to do in response to 9/11. No one should be asking an American what Israel ought to do after 10/7.
This has been discussed by this blog many times.
Let’s focus on a far more globally important issue that is one for America, and Great Britain, and France and all free democracies to address.
Following the October 7 raid and Israel’s military response to it, a wave of anti-Semitism has arisen in the west. It cannot be couched as pro-Palestinian. If that were the case, where were all of these people for the past 75 years? No, this is the eruption of previously latent bigotry and what is most concerning is that it is being led by young people, particularly on college campuses. Yes, the universities have often been the sites of left-wing political thought. But it is completely out of hand as both of the speakers in the videos note. This is more than the uneducated young being led by the radicalized older professors. This is sheer hate and is indicative of two important things as the speakers address.
First, there is no doubt that a disproportionate contribution to western civilization has been made by Jews. For a pretty small minority we Jews have punched above our weight class for hundreds of years and continue to do so. Eric Adams makes that point clear in his address to Central Synagogue on November 17.
Second, when anti-Semitism rises in an otherwise free society, it is indicative of the beginning of rot in that society be it in Spain, Germany, Russia, or the United States. Jews are the canary in the coal mine. When we are being attacked, the non-Jews are next. And, it is the reduction of people to stereotypes, largely by the left, that has given birth to this latest round of bigotry and hate. If everyone is identified by their pronouns, no one is seen as an individual.
Please give these presentations a look. These are greatly articulate leaders who understand that the response by the western world to Israel’s actions after 10/7 is so much more than the result of a territorial dispute in the Middle East.
Only Israel ever gets this kind of criticism. But, beware. Once anti-Semitism is out of the bottle, anti-everybody else is next.
